As computer chip speeds on circuit boards increase to ever faster speeds, a communications bottleneck in inter-chip communication is becoming a larger problem. One likely solution is to use glass fibers to interconnect high speed computer chips. However, most circuit boards involve many layers and often require tolerances in their manufacture of less than a micron. Physically placing glass optical fibers and connecting the fibers to the chips can be too inaccurate and time consuming to be widely adopted in circuit board manufacturing processes.
Routing the optical signals around and between circuit boards can add significant additional complexity. Marketable optical interconnects between chips have therefore proven illusive, despite the need for broadband data transfer.